Tag Archives: Swift

The Allium garden at Ringve

A little secret I’ve had since last autumn (apart from a select few) when I was told that I would get my very own Allium bed at the Ringve Botanical Garden in Trondheim :)
Yesterday, 18th August 2017, I finally got the time to start the planting. I will be planting both the collection of old Norwegian perennial onions that I have collected from all over the country over the last 10 years and a selection of species Alliums to show off their incredible diversity!
The first phase was mainly the planting of my old Norwegian onion collection, Allium schoenoprasum (chives / gressløk), Allium fistulosum (Welsh onion / pipeløk including old Norwegian roof onions from Gudbrandsdalen) and Allium x proliferum (walking onions, tree onions, Egyptian onions / luftløk, etasjeløk). I also planted about 22 accessions of Allium cernuum (nodding onion, Chicago onion / prærieløk) plus a few others like Allium carinatum pulchellum and Norrlands onion (Norrlandsløk).
It was a long day starting at home at 8 am with packing, sorting and documentation, returning home after 10 pm – it was worth it for the sunset from the garden over Trondheimsfjord!! Looking forward to phase 2 which will probably be in September!
 
Thanks to the Norwegian Genetic Resource Centre and particularly Morten Rasmussen for funding the bed preparation and Vibekke Vange and the staff at Ringve for making me feel so welcome!

Preparing Allium cernuum accessions for Ringve at home:

Sunset and the new Allium bed with the accompaniment of screaming  (approving) swifts!  Life is good!!

 

Breeding swifts?

Working in the garden today and I was surprised by two swifts flying low behind the house and one entered an old starling box on the outhouse….
I’ve been trying to attract swifts (tårnseiler) for years to the house and have one swift box higher on the main house, but they chose this instead!
In the video you can hear the bird “screaming” quietly and another sound….could this be chicks?..strange I haven’t noticed this before, but I’ve been away a lot and I have seen two birds flying low in the same area a couple of times this summer (latest last weekend) and also last summer on several occasions (presumably prospecting). After the one bird left I could hear noises in the nest (I didn’t see both birds enter the box)

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